With over 1.2 million followers, Kentucky coach John Calipari is college basketball’s King of Twitter. So when he talks about the subject, he can be looked at as the sport's authority figure. So when he sees that Louisville coach Rick Pitino and Michigan State coach Tom Izzo are ardent non-supporters of social media, he can’t understand it.

“We train them. We bring in professional people. We talk about it. We oversee them. We watch what they put out. If they put out something dumb, we talk to them and tell them why (it’s foolish). We also tell them if you’re into reading the responses, don’t go on Twitter. Twitter is an opportunity — Facebook is an opportunity — to say what you feel, to try to pick people up, to try to be positive, to try to add something to society, to try to let people see you transparently.

“You cannot be defined, if you’re on social media, by somebody else. You will define yourself. And if it’s negative, that’s your fault. But here’s who you are. … We’re trying to tell those kids, ‘Hey, you build your brand or you break your brand down.’ You are who you are through social media. I always say, look, I’m not going to hold my team back from the Twitter and Facebook, but I’m going to teach them. How do you use it for a positive?”

Calipari never responds to comments he makes on social media. It’s simple one-way communication for him, but an effective one.

“I give out information,” Calipari said on the radio show. “I’m transparent to our fans. I tell them how I’m feeling. I talk about the last couple practices. There are things that I want my players to read that I’ll put out. I also have things that we do that only go to our players that I want them to see and hear, videos and other different things. Social media, for anyone to say, ‘Don’t do it; it’s crazy,’ I don’t know what you’re talking about. I go home, I got a 17-year-old son; he doesn’t watch TV. He’s on the computer all day.”